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Since Stephen Harper became prime minister, three buzzwords have crept into mainstream language that stifle public debate, discredit dissent and foreclose alternatives. When politicians and bureaucrats started using these terms, people shook their heads in confusion. Today only a few are brave enough to admit they don’t know what they mean.

The first is governance, an amorphous word that covers everything from the way a leader wields power to the way a small charity accounts to its donors. The term encompasses laws, procedures, standards, ethics and expectations. Its meaning varies with the user. Its criteria are ever-shifting. Yet politicians, bureaucrats, business executives, non-profit leaders and pundits use the term as if everyone knows — or ought to know — what they’re talking about.

Here is an example: “Concluding an agreement with N.W.T. will be an important and positive step in the evolution of northern governance.” The speaker is former aboriginal affairs minister John Duncan, heralding a yet-to-be announced deal that would shift responsibility for land use and resource management from Ottawa to the government of the Northwest Territories. Duncan would not provide details of the negotiations.

What was going on? All a listener could reasonably deduce was that it was sort of devolution. It might benefit northerners or trigger a hasty sell-off of the region’s gold, diamonds, natural gas and petroleum.

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The second catchphrase is due diligence, lifted from the world of corporate finance. In a business setting, its meaning was clear: a stockbroker, real estate dealer or lawyer negotiating a merger/takeover had an obligation to provide the potential buyer with all relevant information. In the realm of politics, it lost its precision. It could denote anything from prudence to transparency, accuracy to integrity.

Here is how Julian Fantino, minister of international co-operation, used it in a recent letter to the Star. “While I am cognizant of the space limitations in the Toronto Star, to leave out much of what the Canadian International Development Agency provided, puts into question Jessica McDiarmid’s due diligence in representing Canada’s exemplary work in Afghanistan.” The minister was responding to a story detailing how $10 billion of the $50 billion Canada spent to build a dam in Afghanistan went to security contractors facing allegations of corruption.

He did not refute a single fact in the story. (Everything was backed up by government documents obtained through Access to Information). Nor did he challenge any of the figures. Fantino’s objection was the writer’s focus: she didn’t present a full picture of Canada’s aid to Afghanistan and didn’t explain how much good the dam would do.

That kind of publicity is his job — not hers. Yet by using the term “due diligence,” the minister was able to insinuate McDiarmid had behaved unprofessionally.

The third and best known buzzword is austerity. By 2010 it had become so popular that Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary made it the word of the year. British Prime Minister David Cameron can take credit for that. He coined the term “Age of Austerity” in his keynote speech to a 2009 Conservative party conference in Cheltenham.

Why he chose austerity, as opposed to retrenchment or frugality, is a mystery. It is a word that conjures up images of severity, starkness and stern self-discipline. But Cameron portrayed it as a virtue and made it the underpinning of his party’s election platform. And the term quickly caught on. Conservative politicians adopted it, then bankers, business executives, economists and headline writers.

Even Thomas Mulcair, leader of the New Democratic Party, jumped on the bandwagon. In his comments on last week’s federal budget, he said: “You cannot austere your way out of a crisis. That is what Mr. Flaherty is attempting to do.” Mulcair could have used the word cut. It would have been simpler, clearer and more trenchant. But in his eagerness to sound clever, he mangled the language and obscured his point.

Jargon, like a weed, pops up everywhere: Hard-earned money, paradigm shift, game-changer, outside the box, take it to the next level, OMG (oh my God) and LOL (laugh out loud). The list of hackneyed phrases is long.

What distinguishes the latest additions are their authoritarian quality and judgmental tone. They silence people who want information, censure people who point out inconvenient truths and bulldoze people who don’t fall into line.

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